Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982), Wednesday 11 October 1978, page 11


Netball

team

in a jubilees challenged

Australia's world champions to tour

England

NSW player Michelle Collyer receives

the ball ahead oí her Tasmanian opponent in a tense match. Pictures are by David Hancock.

fr

UA

The Australian Women's

Netball team will chal-lenge England at London's Wembley Stadium in November, a fitting climax to the Australian Netball Association's Golden Jubilee year celebrations.

The women chosen to play for Australia were an-nounced, amid loud ap-plause, at a Jubilee Dinner held at Miranda, Sydney, recently. The waiting was over for the top players.

The announcement of the team capped a week of the keenest netball competition seen in Australia. The best of Australia's 273,000 players, 16 teams in all from every State (including the North

ern Territory for the first time) reached the finals for the 1978 Elix Trophy.

The last few minutes in a goal for goal final between South Australia and Victoria left both umpires straining to blast whistles above the noise at Miranda's Sutherland Shire netball complex.

As the whistle blew to end

the game 41-38 a Victorian grandstand of blue and white supporters roared their congratulations, lt was Victoria's second trophy.

There was more good news. Australian team selectors who had been choosing the top 10 players to go to England in

In the final of the 1978 Elix Trophy, SA goal attack Sharon Burton shoots for goal defended by

Victorian goal keeper Beth

Hancox who is also covering

SA's goal shooter. Kay Jessen.

BELOW: A player from SA leaps for the ball chased by Norma Plummer, Vic.

November, had chosen four out of the seven players from

Victoria.

The team is: captain, Margaret Caldow (Vic); vice captain, Sharon Burton (SA); Anne Simmonds (NSW); Kerry Baird, Norma Plummer, Beth Hancox (Vic); Christine Whittome (WA); Monica Pukallus, Kay

Ransley, Pat Mickan (SA).

Next year there'll be more keen international competi-tion. Selectors will choose another team to visit Trinidad

in August, to defend Austra-lia's World Championship title which Australia retained at the last World Tournament in Auckland, in 1975. ZO

- DIANA COUTTS I